Writing and...Cold Cuts?

Last week, we picked up some cold cuts at the deli counter at the supermarket. Ham. Turkey breast. A little Swiss cheese. Tasty stuff. The ham was perfect, thin sheets you could almost see through. The turkey, the same, at least when the clerk held up a slice for me to look at an approve. It looked pretty much just exactly perfect. But when we tried to use the turkey to build a sandwich the next day, a funny thing happened: the turkey turned out to be the perfect thickness on one end, and a thin, shreddy mess on the other. Instead of being able to peel up individual slices, you could easily peel up half a slice, and then had to pick through the bits at the other end.

Having run a deli slicer at one point, I think what happens is all in the motion used by the clerk. You can exert more downward at the start of the slice, when your arm is closest to your body. As you push and your arm gets further away from you, you lose downward pressure on the meat, so the back part of the slice is actually thinner than the front half: thus, shreddy meat. Or slices of salami that look like someone's nibbled a bit off the end.

I've noticed (and perhaps I've written about this before, I don't remember) that, in terms of description, my writing is often a lot like those slices of turkey. For whatever reason, I tend to make my writing thick with adjectives and description at the beginning,. I pile it on, descriptions of people with knobby-knuckled hands and hair growing out of their ears, rooms with ankle-deep carpet and pine-scented paneling, deep backyards lit with fireflies at twilight. Whatever. In my RiP, my opening paragraph is five sentences long. Those sentences have enough adjectives for a page. But as I go, the adjectives drop out. Description gets lost in action, dialogue, emotion. The turkey becomes shreddy and thin.

In the case of the RiP, it may be because the passage in question was something I started in my writers' group, not knowing it was going to be the opening of a 300 plus page manuscript. In general, I tend to 'slice thick' on my short stories, I don't know why. It's possible that I use description the way musicians will run through scales as a warm up, or that it's how I find my way into what I'm writing. A lot of the description came out when I ran the manuscript through the Excess Word Removal Machine (pat. pending), but there's still an awful lot there. I thought it was necessary, but on my latest re-read, it still seems a little overdone.

What I can't quite tell is if the pattern persists through the rest of it, i.e., if each writing session starts off with the same slavish devotion to description. I don't think it does. It seems to me that, once I get through that opener, the description become more evenly distributed, and it may well be that it's because I spend between work sessions thinking about the project, writing it in my head.

In the end, I'm not sure how much of a problem this is, whether it's real, or just the sort of thing we doubting writers use to torture ourselves. Front-loaded description may or may not be a problem, depending on how loaded it is (and, perhaps, how predictable: George R.R. Martin's insistence on describing the clothing of every new character in the Game of Thrones epic became annoyingly predictable for me), and how well it serves the story. Maybe there are times where it's best spread evenly, like uniform slices of cold cuts, and other times where it's okay to be lumpy and uneven. What do you think?

And now, some music.

Given that it's almost August, that summer is winding down into the Dog Days, it seems appropriate to throw this little number in from The Who. Amazing that it's forty years ago. Amazing that Roger and Pete are still on tour (and reportedly quite energetic and sounding well). Watching old Who clips is a reminder of how crazed and chaotic they were, and how powerful:

A Thought On Theme, Or What It's All About

Here I am at five in the morning, posting because I can't sleep, not sleeping because I picked up a cold with a really bad sore throat over the weekend. Here I am also writing about my writing for the first time in forever! My apologies for all the rants lately, and thanks for sticking around.

One of the unexpected discoveries of my birthday bash/reunion weekend last month was that one of my old friends is/was working on a novel of his own. This came up when someone asked me, "How's the writing going?" and the almost-inevitable follow-up, "What do you write?" This second is a question that I stumble badly with, as I think I've mentioned before. After stammering my way through a plot summary and trying to find a way to define it ("It's not a genre, but it's not quite literary, but blah, blah, blah"), my friend mentioned his novel, something he started working on a few yeas back when he was commuting via train. He said his novel was currently 400 manuscript pages, that he expected it to top out around 800 (!) when he was finally done--and then he would cut it from there. The problem for him, he said, is that he is no longer commuting, so he's not really writing.

At this point, he gave us a good, solid plot summary (and it sounded pretty interesting, I have to say) and then talked about what the book is actually about--"It's about personal responsibility," he said, and then some more that I don't quite remember, but he was very clear, and I was very jealous because I still find it extremely difficult to talk about what I write without feeling overly self-conscious and a little pretentious. And, there is a certain degree of mushiness in  there. He's writing a book  that's themed around personal responsibility--what is my theme?

Well, as it turns out, there are themes that run through my writing. Looking back over the manuscripts I've completed--and even the one I didn't really finish (my first NaNo) and the one I haven't really started yet, I can see a couple of themes running through. The trend is for main characters who are--or feel like--outsiders. They're trying to find acceptance, trying to find their place in the world, whether that world be within the confines of society at large, a small, somewhat insular town, or their own family. It's not, I suppose an uncommon theme, and maybe I can drill down a little deeper and define it even more than that, but maybe it will be enough, and the next time someone asks, I'll be able to answer without sounding like a fool.




Editing to ADD: Critique Time Over at Carrie's! Submit your query for a chance to be critiqued! Great opportunity!

Musical Monday: Bell Boy

We listened to a bit of The Who's 1973 rock opera, Quadrophenia last night as we came home from dropping the Magpie back off at college. Spring break went fast! So here's a snippet of a 1974 concert of the band performing Bell Boy. Gotta love Keith Moon. I don't think I've ever seen a more watchable drummer. Doesn't look like he had much fun with those headphones, though.




I thank you all for weighing in and answering my question from Friday's post. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this subject, and will probably address it again sometime in the hopefully-near future, in some way. My brain is a little muddled from yesterday's trip, and I'd still love to hear from more of you on the subject. Have a great week!

Musical Monday: Drowned

All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea -- whether it is to sail or to watch it -- we are going back from whence we came. -- John F. Kennedy, September, 1962

Let me flow into the ocean
Let me get back to the sea
Let me be stormy, let me be calm
Let the tide in, and set me free -- Pete Townshend, Drowned

I love the ocean. It's good to be back in it. I love this song. No video to go with it, but  great music. Enjoy.

Musical Monday: A Quick One While He's Away

AT nearly eight minutes, not so quick, perhaps. The Who performing their 'mini-opera,' A Quick One While He's Away for the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus in 1968. Originally released in 1966, A Quick One is probably the first rock opera. In an interview, Pete Townshend told how his producer asked him to write a ten-minute song, which just wasn't done in those days. Townshend's solution was to write six very short songs and string them together. (Volume alert: It's The Who, of course it gets loud!)



 That's it for me today, hope you all had a nice weekend.